


Better Homes & Guardians

by adi_rotynd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Captain America: Civil Custody Dispute, Comic Book-Style Shenanigans, Domestic Fluff, Food, Found Families, Gun Violence, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sam Wilson: Adrenaline Junkie, Scopophobia, Something Not Unlike a Yeti, Tony/Pepper implied, Wanda/Vision mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-05 08:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12186807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adi_rotynd/pseuds/adi_rotynd
Summary: Everyone wants to teach Wanda how to drive, but as the self-designated responsible adult of the group, Sam really feels he should take point on this. He’s the only one who won’t go for a drive around the block to work on residential speed limits and turn it into an international chase with aliens and explosions.He and Wanda quickly prove this exactly wrong on every count.





	Better Homes & Guardians

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the [Sam Wilson Birthday Bang](https://samwilsonbirthdaybang.tumblr.com/), so it [has art](https://sadieb798.tumblr.com/post/165822352291/i-got-to-participate-in-the-samwilsonbirthdaybang)! A charming and beautiful illustration, about which I'm Emotional, and a gorgeous poster, by which I'm Overcome, by [sadieb798](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadieb798) (@sadieb798 on tumblr)!
> 
> This is technically _Civil War_ -compliant but does not take the consequences of CW _even a little_ seriously. Pretty much just resets. It’s sort of "Team Thor" shorts-compliant. Also I’ve used (the name of) villains from the comics, the Blood Brothers, but I’ve interpreted their Wiki description... loosely. (In the name of a joke, because 8k in service of a joke is my jam.)
> 
> It’s also based, less the crossover stuff I’m saving for another day, on [a conversation](http://adirotynd.tumblr.com/post/161673680900/riseagainphoenix-more-cryptid-jeff-winger-from) with my Sammate [matchsticks_p](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks). 
> 
>  
> 
> [fic on tumblr](http://adirotynd.tumblr.com/post/165800996055/better-homes-guardians)  
>   
> 
> Enjoy, and comment should it strike your fancy!

Sam decided he was hallucinating. It was 3 a.m., he’d had to borrow a sweater in the middle of July, the paint-by-shape interior decoration was making him woozy, and he was too deep into… however many mimosas this one made it. What he saw through the windows, coming toward them across the parking lot, was… not actually there. 

Just to be sure, he nudged Steve. “Steve,” he said. “Who did you ask to come get us?”

Steve mumbled and turned his head toward Sam. He slipped off Thor’s shoulder and jerked awake. “What?”

Outside, they advanced. The yellow wash of light, streetlamps over acres of road and parking lot, kept their faces monochrome and strange. Sam could still be wrong. 

“You texted somebody to come give us a ride home. Who was it?” 

“Oh, uh…” Steve rubbed creases from his face. “Bucky.” He leaned over to kiss Sam’s cheek, on wakeup autopilot, and Sam staved him off. Impending doom aside, Asgardian liquor was some hellfire on the breath. 

Wanda laughed and put her cup of orange juice on the bench beside her. She pulled the bottle of convenience store You Won’t Believe It’s Not Champagne out of her bag. “No, that’s not right. I texted for our ride.” 

Thor cradled his mug of coffee and, unhelpfully, snored. 

“Wanda,” Sam said. “Who did you text.”

She looked up, bottle frozen in midair. “I know it will be awkward for you,” she said, “but we need to get back into the United States, yes? So…” Behind her, the door opened. 

“So you texted Stark.” 

The lighting inside Denny’s wasn’t all that much better than the parking lot, but Sam diagnosed himself as of sound mind and vision. Tony Stark and James Barnes had entered the restaurant together, after exiting the same car. They both looked… unhappy. 

Sam downed the last of his mimosa. “The good news is, our ride’s here.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x

The day had not started like a cautionary tale about minding his self-respect. 

“Who’s doing what today?” Sam asked, instead of turning his head to look at the desktop calendar tacked to the kitchen wall. In his defense, he couldn’t move any part of his body this soon after downing a Steve Rogers Special. Steve couldn’t make a wide range of dishes, but fry up a mess of eggs and five different meats… that, the man could do. 

“Well,” said Bucky, “if you turn your head four inches to the right…” 

“It’s too hot out,” Sam said. “I can’t look and find out you and Steve are planning on windsprints. Seeing that written down would give me heat exhaustion.” 

Wanda, who’d just joined them, looked up from the coffee pot, over which she’d been muttering PG-13 things in Sokovian. She was wearing a shirt she’d stolen out of Bucky’s dresser, judging by the torn-off left sleeve, and a pair of boxers she’d stolen out of one of Tony’s guest rooms, judging by the fine-hotel quality and the cartoon Iron Man zooming around the thigh. Her hair was still half in her face. “You and Steve ran this morning,” she accused. “I heard you leave. It was early.” She said _early_ like it, too, was a PG-13 word. 

“It wasn’t ninety degrees at five a.m.” Steve hopped up from the table with way too much energy, given he’d just eaten a carton of eggs and it was, now, ninety degrees. “You ready for breakfast?”

Wanda looked at Bucky. “Thirty-two,” he provided. 

She made a face. “At least the car has cold air.” She poured herself a mug of coffee and blinked at Sam over the rim. There was way too much big green eye going on. Sam had a bad feeling about it. “I do want breakfast,” she said. “Crêpes would be a good breakfast, I think.”

Sam groaned. “I’m not standing near that stove.” 

“I will cook them! But you make the batter best. Better than I do.”

Steve frowned. “That doesn’t sound like a very well-balanced meal. You need protein.”

“Steve…” Sam shook his head. “Fine, Wanda, but you… bring me the ingredients and a bowl, I’m not moving.”

“You know eating all protein isn’t balanced, right?” Bucky said. “Steve? Don’t start with me about leafy greens, Sam, I know what I’m doing. I’m just not sure Steve does.” 

Steve set his chin. “I did an educational video about the food pyramid,” he said, in a tone that suggested this was the equivalent of a doctorate in nutrition. 

“Anyway,” Sam said, accepting the flour and a mixing bowl from Wanda, “what about the car?”

“Oh yeah.” Bucky tipped his chair back on two legs. “I’m teaching Wanda to drive today.” 

Sam choked on the cloud of flour dust he inhaled. “You’re— _you’re_ teaching Wanda to drive? To _drive._ That’s the plan the two of you came up with?”

“I know how to drive.” Wanda handed off eggs and butter. “I’m only not so sure how to drive in America.”

“In _D.C._ ,” Sam said. 

She set the milk carton on the table. “Are the rules very different here from other places?”

“Dude, I’m not talking about the traffic laws—” Sam glared at Steve. “You wanna back me up here?”

“Hm?” Steve had been fixing himself another cup of coffee and probably sulking about the egg situation, which was too damn bad, because this situation was pulling rank on the eggs. “Oh, I mean… Bucky taught me to drive.” 

“Hey! Never mind, then. I don’t even remember what I was worried about.” 

Bucky screwed his mouth up. “This is because I pulled the steering wheel off your car, isn’t it.” 

“We could start there, Barnes, sure. You jumped on my car and pulled the steering wheel out of my hands while I was doing sixty on the freeway. That does stick with me.”

Wanda looked at Bucky. “Ninety-six,” he provided. 

“But actually,” Sam insisted, “I was talking about how you learned to drive in the 40s and you still think seatbelts are a cute novelty item and road signs are for people who don’t know to yield according to ‘common sense.’ Although, again, yeah, since you bring it up, you also stole a motorcycle out from under a guy and pulled the steering wheel off my car.” 

Bucky shrugged. “I’m sorry about that last one. Look, when we were growing up there were a lot of think-pieces about how cars were ruining America. I tune out a lot of that noise now.” 

“That noise, by which you mean the speeding tickets.” 

“I’m a ninety-nine-year-old POW. I outrank these yahoos trying to give me tickets.” 

“Okay,” Steve said, “hang on, Buck, to be fair, the death toll went down because of seatbelts and traffic laws. Wanda, maybe I should take you.” 

Sam managed not to drop the flour he was sifting. He set it down instead, and started counting off on his fingers. “How many modes of transportation have you blown up, crashed, _thrown_ , and otherwise used as weapons at this point? Because your insurance premium says to me that it’s a lot. I’m up to five just off the top of my head.” 

Bucky perked up. “I make it seven.” 

Steve frowned at Sam’s fingers like he could tell which times Sam had counted. “I bet at least one of those was you, Buck.” 

He shook his head. “That helicopter was your fault.” 

Wanda sighed too close to her coffee and splattered it on her shirt. She swore in Sokovian again and went to the sink. “If you won’t do it, I’m sure when I go back Monday, Tony—” 

“I’ve never crashed a car _by accident_ ,” Steve said, straightening and going bull-chested, “so I don’t know why I shouldn’t—” 

Sam whacked the measuring spoon on the bowl, splattering baking powder into the flour. “Nobody who’s climbed into a racecar and flipped it upside down is teaching you how to drive and neither is anybody who got grandfathered into their license. _I’m_ teaching you how to drive.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Wanda backed out of the driveway like a model citizen, all mirrors checked, and did a three-point turn that felt like it had been mathematically charted. Then she floored it. 

“ _Jesus_ ,” Sam said as shining mailboxes and wilting gardens whipped by. “Where’s the fire?”

Wanda looked legitimately alarmed. 

“No, okay, expression. Turn of phrase. Please slow down, and that I mean literally. You know those are speed limits, right? The big white signs that say speed limit on them?” He pointed at one for the brief moment it appeared outside his window. 

“Oh.” Wanda eased off, hunched over the wheel to match the speedometer to the signs. “Miles per hour are so slow.” She was at exactly the limit now, but she sounded like Bucky when he was deciding a rule didn’t apply to him. “Tony said the important thing was to drive safely. I think if we are not on a race track I have time to avoid any accidents.” Her fingers glowed and tapped out a little dance along the steering wheel. In a nearby driveway a Volvo lifted up, turned to face the street, and settled back onto the ground. Its alarm went off. 

“Uh- _huh_ ,” said Sam. “I’m not saying traffic is any match for your phenomenal cosmic powers. But you’re out here to learn the rules, right? And first of all, Tony’s talking about basic speed limits. We’re in D.C., so what we’ve got are absolute speed limits. Doesn’t matter how safe you’re being, you’re breaking the law if you go a mile per hour over.” Or if you didn’t but the officer felt like you had. Wanda, though, wasn’t going to set off that particular emotional speedometer. 

She looked disappointed in D.C. as a whole. “What’s second of all?”

“Second of all _holy shit_ —” Sam braced himself against the dashboard like he could push to safety the little old lady in whose manslaughter he was about to be complicit. Wanda swerved into the wrong lane, cleared the floral dress and white hair, and went on her way. “Second of all,” he said, as calmly as he could, “don’t do that.” 

Wanda’s eyes were wide. “Did she not see me coming? In Sokovia you don’t step into traffic if you are too old to run.”

“In most of the U.S., she has the right of way even in an unmarked crosswalk, and I have the right to make it to forty before my first heart attack. Between you and Barnes we’re going to have a traffic cop camped outside our house making paper airplanes out of all the tickets and throwing them in the window.” 

“It’s easier for me on the freeway.” She spun the wheel and sailed left on red, weaving around an SUV. The soccer mom driving it laid into her horn and kept it blasting until they were halfway down the block. 

Sam considered and dismissed the idea of asking her to pull over, calling Steve, and surrendering the passenger seat to someone who’d roll out of the inevitable fiery crash with a lower hospital bill than his was going to be. “Wanda,” he said, levelly, “it’s _right._ Right on red.” 

“What is?” 

“You’re allowed to turn right when the light’s red.” 

“Really?” She laughed. “That’s a rule? In Sokovia the rule is you don’t turn either way. A red light is a red light.” 

“So what was the thought there, because I don’t know about you, if maybe there’s a flaw in the windshield that’s distorting the colors, but I know I saw red—”

“But everyone turns. Then we pay the cops if they saw us.” 

_Not here,_ Sam opened his mouth to say, and then almost settled for, _We can’t afford them in my household._

“You’re making the same face Tony made when I said that is how we get into schools and skip the wait in hospitals.” Wanda pulled another manual-perfect move, braking gently. Sam didn’t even feel the moment the car stopped. “We’ll go to the freeway,” she said. “I’m a good driver. I won’t let anything happen to you.” 

Sam’s chest twisted up some. “Listen,” he said, “no, that’s not what I’m saying.”

She frowned through the windshield, and then, just barely and under her eyelashes, at him. 

“Okay, a couple dramatic scenarios have occurred to me, but come on, you know I’m not serious with that shit. Also, quit doing that.” 

“When you think about burning to death, that is a very loud thought.” 

Sam knocked his skull back into the headrest. It didn’t have that cathartic thud, but it’d do. “I trust you,” he said. “You know that, right?” 

“I do.” She smiled and it filled her cheeks out, made her look younger. She tapped her temple with a black-nailed and bejeweled finger. “I can tell.” 

“So when I say that you can relax, because this is seriously just about teaching you some rules you have to follow to make all of our lives easier, not about me getting out here and deciding I spend my days in fear for my life, you believe me?” 

Wanda dropped her hands into her lap. “Yes.” She tugged at the hem of what Sam was choosing, now that they were out and about, to think of as Iron Man shorts, rather than boxers. “I asked—” 

The blast of a horn shredded the air between them. 

“Third of all,” Sam said, craning his neck to make sure it wasn’t the same SUV idling behind them, “let’s not have heart-to-hearts at stop signs.” 

She took her foot off the brake. “I still think we should go to the freeway.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sam had patterns in his life, series of similar events that played out in roughly the same order. Some of them he noticed later than he should have, and that bugged him or worse. It bugged him that it took him until he was ten years old to figure out that, unless their parents interfered, Gideon’s turn meant ‘until Gideon was done with the toy,’ and Sarah’s turn meant ‘until the toy was broken.’ It was worse that it took him a tour and a half to figure out that doing what he was told in the Air Force left him with a bad taste in his mouth nine and a half times out of ten. 

This, though—he didn’t feel bad about this. He didn’t feel he could have looked at past events and logically anticipated their repetition. He felt justified in concluding last time was a once-in-a-lifetime event. 

But… no. Here he was again. 

They got on the freeway in fair-to-light traffic for a D.C. weekday. It was 10:00. People with nine-to-fives were already shut in their air-conditioning and most everyone else was still getting ready to flee to whatever retreat they could conjure up. Sam decided Steve could field the lesson on rush-hour road rage; he’d been idly hoping for the opportunity while they were up here, but Steve used enough of his smoldering fury on everything else that he was unruffled by traffic. 

“What insurance premium?” Wanda asked. 

Sam was almost dozing. His arm was too hot in the sun lancing though the window, but he didn’t want to move it. Wanda did seem to have a better handle on the protocol for driving outside of residential neighborhoods. He had the D.C. DMV guide open on his phone and was scrolling through it, though that wasn’t waking him up any. “Huh?”

“You said, your insurance premiums. Because Steve is a risk-taker.” She said ‘risk-taker’ like she was quoting someone, and Sam contemplated getting irked in case it was Tony, but decided not to bother in case it was Natasha. “But we all have insurance from Stark Industries, yes?” 

“Yeah, Steve’s is way higher,” Sam laughed. “I’m not sure he actually knows that. He tried to do his own books for a while but now he pays me in micro-brews to figure it out for him.” And in blow-jobs, but Wanda didn’t need to hear that. She whined enough about it every time she caught them getting a tiny bit hot and heavy in the living room. “I can do a mean forgery of his signature.” 

Wanda looked—a little hurt, or shocked, or something—and before Sam could ask, it goddamn happened again. 

Her face went slack, absolutely with shock now, and she braked in the middle of the road. Cars drifted by in the lanes on either side of them, running on disbelief. Horns blared and cut off. To either side of Sam, life went on. Dead center, right ahead through the windshield, normalcy had bowed out and let a monster have the stage. 

“I don’t need this,” Sam said aloud. A Prius careened past the monster. It was a yeti. Sam couldn’t have described a yeti offhand, but he knew one when he saw it, and it was the nine-foot snowy-furred ape standing in the middle lane and howling. “I’m just trying to share some rules of the road on a quiet Wednesday, I don’t need this again.” At least it hadn’t reached into his car and thrown a man into oncoming traffic or grabbed his steering wheel, he told himself, but the comfort was on the cold side. 

A sports car with fins on the back and one of those decals of a little dude pissing, presumably driven by someone in a dead panic, passed them and then switched lanes right in front of the yeti. It bellowed and smashed its fist into the hood. 

“Understandable,” Sam muttered; if he had the strength of ten men, he might smash asshole vehicles like that. Still, he popped his door open. He didn’t have the wings or the shield or even a pistol, but he suspected he had a leveler head than the sports car prick. 

Wanda got out, too, and Sam had to stop himself from telling her to get back in the car. Switch gears and let her be an Avenger. 

They met by the headlights, to give the sports car space to back up in a plume of smoke and burning rubber. The driver looked okay, and he was stopping any more traffic from trying to go by as he swerved, fishtailing backward. People might not expect a car to back up on the freeway, but unlike a yeti, it was something they could believe was happening and respond to. 

Sounded like they were mostly responding by blowing their horns and yelling, but as long as they stopped the incoming traffic, Sam’d take it. 

“Is it looking at us?” Sam narrowed his eyes, peering at it through the smog and the sun glaring off its polar-bear fur. 

“ _Strength incites challenge_ ,” Wanda said. 

“Man, let’s deal with the conflict before you give me his entire catastrophe speech.” 

“It doesn’t take so long. It’s nine words.” 

“Feels longer when he gives it, I guess.” Sam exhaled hard. “You got any ideas about how to deal with this specific conflict?” 

“You could be nicer about him.” 

“He could stop trying to pull up that streetlamp.” 

“I mean Viz.” 

“ _I_ mean the yeti that’s about to impale me on a streetlamp.” 

Wanda put her hands on her hips. Her counter-corner elbow got him in the ribs. “I don’t think he’s dangerous.” 

Sam groaned. “I didn’t say he was dangerous. I just think he’s too old for you. Or too young for you. See, I shouldn’t have to stop and figure that out.” 

“Sam. I mean the—yeti.” 

“Seriously?” The yeti, as if to underscore Sam’s point, swung the streetlamp in a sparking arc across the width of the freeway and bellowed again. An impressive array of yellowed fangs sprayed saliva onto its chin. “He took a chunk out of a car with his fist.”

“He’s upset.” She put her glowing hands out. The sun beat Sam harder about the head just watching her. It was the least sweaty option, given it didn’t involve physical violence, but the red light looked mercilessly hot against the sticky blacktop. “Sometimes I blow things up when I’m upset too. But he wants…” She frowned. “Talk to him for a minute, please,” she said, and she did that thing where she fucking phased out. 

“Goddamnit,” Sam muttered. 

The yeti threw the streetlamp, but straight down, more like a cranky toddler smashing his blocks than a demonic mutant launching a calculated attack. The pole clanged down the road a couple yards and rolled to a stop with some wires spitting over the median. 

“Yeah, good,” Sam said, loud enough the thing could hear him but hopefully not so loud he sounded threatening. “Quick thinking. Keep the cars back on that side too.” He raised his hands, _unarmed_ , like he had a gun but was choosing not to go for it, and took a few slow steps forward. “We’re cool, right? We’re all cool, you and me and anyone being an invisible little shit…” 

The yeti’s shoulders heaved. There was a lot of muscle movement in the heaving. Its mouth was still open, lips curled back. It was starting to remind Sam of a cat panting with terror. Which he felt bad about, but a terrified cat could do some damage, and those things were ten pounds, tops. This guy was more like seven hundred. 

Sirens wailed. The air hummed, a helo too far away for the sound to have resolved into blades chopping. The traffic behind them had clogged up but couldn’t get away, and the traffic on the far side of the median was slowing to a fascinated crawl. Sam was dimly aware of being the accident they were rubbernecking. 

He set his tongue between his teeth and inhaled in a hiss. He might not be real clear on what to do about a yeti, and he might wish he had a gun to make himself feel better, but he knew what was going to happen if the cops—and no way did they have some kind of animal control expert with them already—started shooting. There had to be eighty civilians this thing could get to before the bullets even slowed it down. 

“Okay,” Sam said. “We’re gonna deal with this. Can you understand me at all?” The yeti gave the pavement a slap, then put its hands over its ears and met Sam’s eyes for the first time. Sam didn’t put a lot of faith in the whole _windows to the soul_ deal, but that wasn’t incomprehension in there. He took another couple steps forward, eyeing the yeti’s arms; they were long, but he was pretty sure he was still out of range. “So yes. You can. Look, dude, we’ll figure this out.” He made what he hoped was the pan-universal signal for _calm down_. 

The pavement waved under the heat, and then coiled, and then Wanda was standing next to him again. 

The yeti made a snorting sound, and then a warbling moan. It drummed the road a couple more times. 

“We have to help him,” Wanda said. She looked, all of a sudden, like she’d been up twenty-four hours straight, drawn and smudge-eyed. “He needs to go home. He’s sick. They’ll put him back on the Raft and he will die there. I see what he fears. Please, Sam.” 

The sirens were closer. If it weren’t for the backed-up traffic, they’d have cops crawling all over them already. The helo was on top of them, blades thumping, and since it wasn’t shooting Sam assumed it was news. The yeti, which apparently didn’t deserve this, snarled at the cars on the other side of divide. Some idiot honked their horn at it. Say somebody higher up the chain beat the cops… _Hell, nobody deserves the Raft._

“Fuck…” Sam looked up, straight into the only exit, and grinned. “I’m gonna need a present. Can you get me a helicopter?” 

Wanda threw her hands up, crackling red. The light spread down her arms and lit her face scarlet. “No problem.” The helo swung crazily above them, listing and lurching. It dropped three feet and came up short. 

Sam nodded. “Oh, we’re going straight back to jail.” 

The cars were packed too tight to back up. There was more screaming about the helicopter than there had been about the yeti, although again, Sam understood that one of those things seemed like it might really kill you and the other seemed like you might have overdosed on cold medicine. 

There was, just barely, room for Wanda to set and hold the helicopter down. The pilot jumped out and ran for it. So did two other guys, one of them carrying a video camera. 

Christine Everhart didn’t run anywhere. She stayed right in her seat so she could yell at them. “I am in town for a confidential meeting with a whistleblower in the Pentagon!” She’d have had to yell anyway, to get her voice over the wind and the mechanical shuddering, but Sam felt confident Wanda could have cut the power and Everhart’s volume would have stayed right where it was. “My channel calls and pulls me for the Abominable Snowman?! Did Stark set this up?” 

Sam mentally downgraded the charges against them. Maybe they could strike whatever kind of grand theft this would have been. “Actually,” he yelled back, “you know what’d really, I mean _really_ piss Stark off?” 

Everhart paused and set a spiked heel on the landing skid. “I’m listening.” 

Wanda, sweat sticking her hair to her forehead, broke out the long lashes and the big green eyes. “Everyone else knows how to pilot these,” she said. 

“Everyone else is over twenty-five and had a license at some point.” Sam pointed to the yeti. “Get your new pal in back and keep him calm. I’m driving.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

“My friends!” 

A dubiously commandeered Quinjet and eight hours later, Thor didn’t seem even a little nonplussed to see them. Sam, in his position, would have been. An invisible jet had just set down in his back yard, to start with. A jet holding three superheroes and a yeti, of whose arrival he’d had zero warning. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. His voice was too deep; he was pulling his Cap crap. Sam rolled his eyes, but couldn’t blame him for falling back on some kind of routine. He’d met them at the nearest Avengers HQ and flown them straight across international waters, to another continent, with no flight path cleared. He was frazzled. Sam still didn’t care for the lofty chin and tone. “We couldn’t call—” 

“Of course not!” Thor cut through the hours of this that threatened by flinging his arms around Steve and hauling him off his feet. “I have no phone and you’ve no ravens! How foolish of me not to have realized.” He set Steve down and turned to Sam. “Samuel,” he said, a little choked up, and hugged Sam just as hard. 

Sam realized a couple things. That Thor was somewhere past tipsy, for one. That Thor was wearing another pair of those Iron Man boxers and an open robe and nothing else, for another. “Hey, man.” He thumped Thor’s back and tried to get his toes back on the thin crust of snow. The damn snow. It was July. “You know, we’ve met three whole times now, so you could go ahead and start calling me Sam.” 

“You could go ahead and let him breathe, too,” Steve said, a little waspish, but he looked closer to laughing than launching into a five-minute apology for not keeping in touch followed by a seven-minute lecture about that being a two-way street, so Sam’d take it. 

“It would be an honor.” Thor set Sam down, kissed him smackingly on the forehead, and shook his hand. “Sam.” He’d met Wanda, as far as Sam knew, once. She got picked up anyway, and Thor turned to Steve still holding her. “I assume you come on urgent business.” 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “Things got away from us.” He picked up some steam. “And I didn’t even know you were on Earth until a couple months ago, never mind New Zealand—” 

“No matter.” He set Wanda down, ruffled her hair, and tucked her under his arm. “I accept. What foe is arrayed against us? I understand the Widow to have left Stark’s side.” 

Steve planted his feet. Crossed and re-crossed his arms. Re-planted his feet. 

“Nice house,” Sam said. “Great spot you’ve got here. Spacious. We’re not actually fighting Tony now. What’s the square footage?” 

“We shall ask Darryl. He attends to such matters, and also does light typing.” Thor’s brows gathered. “The clash between Avengers is finished? Then it is for some lesser task you wish my help?” 

“The clash was not as fun as it sounds,” Wanda said. 

“The task is pretty sizable.” Sam pointed back into the jet. “It’s sleeping right now, but it’s intimidating when it wakes up.” It had drooled on his boots the whole ride down here, while Wanda lobbied to be taught to pilot the jet and Steve sounded like he was considering it, leaving Sam to say no. It was some bullshit, stealing a helicopter and still having to be the buzzkill. 

“I _see_.” Thor pulled Sam against his other side and marched into the jet with the both of them in tow and without another glance at Steve. Also, still without pausing for shoes or pants. “Well, I can only hope it proves a challenge worthy of the might of… ah.” 

“Yeah.” The yeti was curled up on the floor and even like that, it took up as much space as a decently-cushioned loveseat. In the enclosed space, it smelled like fish. “We were hoping you could… point him in the direction of his hometown.” 

“I see,” Thor repeated, with a lot more weight and a lot less pissery. He let go of Wanda, after ruffling her hair again, and of Sam, after clapping his shoulder. He reached back toward the door with one hand, and crouched to poke the yeti with the other. 

“Nobody better go starting a fight with an alien on this jet,” Sam said under his breath. 

“Of course not,” Thor said, as one of the creature’s hawk-yellow eyes rolled open. “Still, it might be prudent for you to step back.” Mjolnir sang through the door, narrowly missing Steve, and thudded into his palm. 

“Dude, we have to fly this thing home.” Sam kept his tone soothing in case the yeti gave a shit, and didn’t give way more of a shit about the magic high-powered weapon. 

“If our friend here tears your arms off, how will you fly home then?” Thor sounded downright pleasant. He was holding Mjolnir not exactly behind his back but something close to it. 

The yeti croaked at Thor, then sat up and lowed like a cow. Its shoulders were drooping, which halved its width. Sam leaned toward Wanda. “It looks bad.” 

“It is bad,” she said tightly. “He needs to go home or he will die. I don’t know the word in English.” 

“They don’t have it.” Thor set the hammer down, unconcerned now. “’Homesick’ is closest, but…”

“He needs his brother.” Wanda tipped the words past her teeth. 

“Indeed.” Thor stood. “And this would be easier if…” He patted Wanda’s shoulder. “But we must attend to the task at hand with the tools at hand. I’m afraid the tools I have at hand are mainly… Heimdall.”

“I hear you, it’s rough when your only resource is a guy who can tesseract his way anywhere in any galaxy at the drop of a hat.” Sam tried to work a kink out of his arms rather than reach for Wanda himself. She didn’t talk about Pietro, and when she wanted to she knew she could. In the meantime she liked to tag along with Sam when he visited Sarah or Gideon, and then not talk much about anything for a day after. “He can do that, right?”

“He can,” Thor said, lingering on the verb. 

“Good,” Steve said, stern and scowling in the doorway, back to Captain’s Orders rather than approach a face-to-face apology. 

“Quickly?” Sam pressed, because Thor wasn’t leaping into action. It had just occurred to him he’d made the news and by now Sarah and Gideon had seen it. He hoped Everhart was still feeling favorable about this whole thing. 

Thor thumped Mjolnir into his thigh a few times. “He can do it quickly.”

The yeti hummed and pushed its head under Sam’s hand, fever-hot under his palm. Its fur felt like llama fuzz.

“This sounds like a good solution,” Wanda said, when Thor kept aiming for that record-breaker for how long Sam had seen him stand still. 

“It does,” Thor said. 

Steve and Wanda waited. Thor waited back. Sam, with the tools at hand, marshalled every bit of his patience and said, “Is there maybe a drawback we don’t get?”

“Oh, no,” Thor said. “Not at all.” He examined the ceiling. “Although, I suppose, now that you mention it… If I ask Heimdall’s aid, he will have to tell my father about it.” 

Sam was tempted to scratch the yeti behind the ears, but those were some long-ass teeth protruding over its lips. He kept his hand still. “Everybody goes through some growing pains when they leave home for the first time,” he said. “Your dad’s what, a million years old? I’m sure he gets it by now.” 

“When he left home for the first time, he conquered nine realms and founded an empire,” Thor said. “I have conquered Darryl.” 

“You haven’t conquered me,” said a short man in suit pants, glasses, and a sensible winter coat. He was peering into the jet from the yard, and he made Steve jump, which Sam was not ever going to let him live down. “In fact, you owe me so much rent I might have conquered you. Do your friends want some cocoa?” 

Thor pulled himself together. “We will all take cocoa! Except the Blood Brother here, who will be leaving us forthwith.” He slapped the yeti’s back. Sam had a coronary, but the yeti just put its face against his thigh and burbled. Now he had drool on his jeans, too. “Come, my friend.” Thor stooped and shrugged the yeti’s arm over his shoulders. “Up we get. We had better do this outside, if you expect to use this jet again. Or indeed have enough of it left to melt for another.” 

“ _That’s_ considerate,” said Darryl. 

“I think so.” 

“It’d be considerate to stop trying to bring that horse inside, too.” 

“I _bartered_ for the horse, which is how I ought to be paying rent as well.” 

“Thor,” Sam said. “Real quick. I don’t know how it is on Asgard, but if I were, I don’t know, FaceTiming my folks, personally, I’d put some pants on.” 

Thor nodded and looked like he was really turning that one over. “An excellent point.” He shrugged out from under the yeti and balanced it with an arm on Sam’s shoulders instead. “I shall meet you in the yard.” 

That, at least, got Steve moving. He let up on the Cap Stance and came over to take the yeti’s other arm before it toppled; Sam was holding on as best he could, but gravity was winning. “Thor, do you need help with the rent?” Steve whispered. 

Thor didn’t whisper. “I need Darryl to understand the value of solid gold Asgardian currency.” He exited, robe billowing dramatically. It would have looked cool if it were a cape, and if he were dressed underneath it. 

Steve shook his head. “Why does everyone have those boxers?” 

“Tony stocks his guest rooms with them and never takes inventory.” Sam had three pairs himself. “They’re comfy.” 

“They are,” Wanda said absently, without looking away from the yeti. Its chest was working like a bellows, so Sam got the concern. He just hoped she was keeping it calm, because he bet it had some reserves of adrenaline in there. Or whatever yetis had instead of adrenaline. “I have two.” 

Steve did a lot of the laundry. He frowned. “I thought you had five.” 

It had been a miracle he made it this long; it wasn’t like he was all that careful about what he had on under his pants when Steve went for them. Sam braced up under his half of the yeti’s weight. “Baby, I have to tell you something. I want you to bear in mind how comfy those things are, okay?” 

“Aw, geeze,” Steve protested. 

“The thread count is very high,” Wanda agreed. 

“ _Speaking_ of Tony,” said Steve quellingly, “I don’t want you to lie to him, Wanda, obviously.” 

Wanda tore her gaze away from the yeti. “I wasn’t planning to…” 

Sam’s phone rattled in his pocket. He held onto the yeti’s wrist with one hand and tried to grab his phone without unbalancing the seven hundred pounds of alien. 

“But, you know, he wasn’t here for this. He might not understand how… dire the need was. I’m not too sure you need to bring it up, necessarily. You don’t always tell him every single thing we let you do on weekends, right?” 

“I didn’t bring up the time you took me on your motorcycle even though you have no helmets, no.” 

“Right, so maybe this could stay under the radar.” 

“I don’t think so.” Sam had gotten to his phone. He had several texts from Natasha. _I want you to picture me relaxing on a beach as you read this,_ said the first one. _I have a martini in my hand and Nick is snoring on a towel nearby. I want you to understand what you crazy kids are interrupting._ The final one said, _So don’t enter US airspace with that jet or Ross might shoot you down. You better call someone to get you, and by someone I mean someone else._ She ended with an emoji of a face blowing a kiss. Sam sent one of those back instead of a real response. 

“All right,” Steve said when Sam showed him his phone. “We can… we can make this work. Let’s just get this guy home first. Wanda, would you check whether Thor—” 

“Heimdall,” Thor said. “Open the Bifrost! And you might point out to my father that admitting my need for help and calling attention to my status here is, in a way, the most responsible thing I could do under the circumstances, so much so that it perhaps outweighs other considerations!” 

The aurora australis punched a tunnel from the sky all the way down to the backyard. Sam was going to guess it was visible from about the entirety of New Zealand. “See, you missed the standoff on the freeway. I don’t think our odds of keeping this quiet were ever all that great.” 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

It was not the day Sam had been looking for when he left the house that morning. But in Avenger terms… well, there hadn’t been any explosions, per se. Nobody got shot. They saved a life—an alien life with unknown crimes to its name, but still. Sam hadn’t felt that bad about it, on the whole. 

That was before Thor and Darryl had them in for drinks and Sam left it to Steve and Wanda to figure out who to call to get them home. And before they realized they had another eight hours to kill before anyone would get there. And before Thor volunteered to show them around Christchurch, Gateway to Antarctica. It was, above all else, before Sam smuggled alcohol into a Denny’s at 1 a.m. and bought Wanda a glass that lit up. 

“ _So,_ " Tony said. He sat down next to Wanda. He straightened the cuffs on his jacket. He put his hands on his face and swiped them together. “I’m… I’m trying to figure out where to start, here.” 

Steve didn’t look like a man who’d just snuck a flagon of mead into Denny’s and then fallen asleep for nearly an hour straight, although he did still smell like one. He was clear-eyed and skirting the edge of stern while he decided how placating to be. “Tony,” he said. 

“Oh no,” Tony said. “No, that wasn’t an invitation. Let me rephrase. I’m trying to decide where I will start. Me. I’ll be starting. As the one who just walked out of a board meeting to fly to the other side of the planet—and I can demonstrate that for you, if you want, on a globe—with _zero_ notice, I get to make the first move.” 

“You don’t like board meetings,” Wanda said. “In a way this is better.” Her cup sparkled through the colors of the rainbow.

Tony stared at her, and at her drink, and at her purse. He rubbed his forehead. “Oh, good, a whole other conversation.” By the time he’d dropped his hand, he was staring at Sam. 

Sam, evidence to the contrary and all, hadn’t really anticipated this. “What?” 

“Did you miss the part where you left the country, in one of my jets, with my—Wanda—and a Martian on board?” 

“It was an emergency,” Sam said. Bucky pulled a chair up the end of the table rather than ask Tony and Wanda to slide down their booth. He sat down and stole Sam’s mimosa in the same motion. Sam didn’t object, under the circumstances. “You and Steve don’t want to yell this out?” 

“It was an—” Tony twisted the ring on his finger and visibly counted to ten. “So my issue here, Sam, is that it’s always an emergency.” 

“Hey, man, I was trying to avoid this. That’s why I took her. My track record for running to the gas station without stumbling across aliens or a government conspiracy is the best in this room.” 

Bucky choked on Sam’s mimosa, which was what he deserved. 

Tony lost what cool he’d been retaining. He closed his fingers just in time, but he’d been about to hit the table. “Why didn’t you call me?” he snapped, just barely too low to be yelling. 

Sam’s heartrate picked up, and he hadn’t been expecting that, either. So Tony was mad at him; that wasn’t an unprecedented turn of events. Sam wasn’t, as a baseline, all that invested in Tony Stark’s emotional state. “We didn’t have time,” he said. 

“Hey.” Steve pushed his glass in front of Thor. The clear table it bought wasn’t worth the attention it called. “Enough. I should have called you when Sam asked me to meet them, all right?” 

“Hang on,” Tony said. “No, I’m not—I’m stuck on how Sam thinks he was avoiding anything by being the one to take her.” 

“He was a safer bet than me or Bucky,” Steve said fiercely. Sam squinted at him, because that had actually been too fierce. More like Steve defending his man than Steve saying something he actually believed. 

Sam leaned back. He was glad Bucky had stolen his mimosa. He might have pulled a Steve otherwise. “I’m not the one who flies straight up until my tech ices over.” 

“No, you just dive-bomb tunnels on a sixteen-foot wingspan and try to stay right above the cars being flipped directly under you. Are you—is this for real? You’re the designated driver here?” 

“Listen, man, I’m perfectly capable of being a responsible individual. I’ve got a day job. I’ve got a mortgage.” 

“He does,” Steve said, voice softened with the awe this arcane concept inspired. 

“You know what? I keep dossiers on my employees.” Tony apparently kept them on his eyeglasses, because he took them out of his pocket with a flourish and put them on. He started poking them and gesturing. Sam preferred the light shows he could see. “December 2008, did you or did you not disobey a commanding officer, steal a horse, and ride off with a grenade launcher?” 

“That was—” 

“An emergency. Stole those wings from Fort Meade, also an emergency. Knife to a gunfight, you and three other guys storm an entire intelligence organization, you and your boots against the occasional helicopter, it’s always an emergency and it’s always the right thing to do but now that we work together again would you _just_ —call me first. Please.” 

Sam realized why his heart was going double-time and why he’d had to curl his fingers into the edge of the table to stop them shaking. The last time Tony was mad at him, personally, not him-adjacent-to-Steve, had been—

Tony pulled himself back. “I’m going to the jet. I fly that one, Cap takes the one I came in, and there’s a decent chance James can get us past Ross.” 

Bucky looked like the kid in class who hadn’t done the reading he was being called on to analyze. Steve stood up when Tony did. “Hang on—” 

“ _James_ ,” Tony continued, “is working on Ross right now, and he wants to see you when you get back.” He pointed at Sam. “So don’t run off the second we get to New York.” 

Wanda screwed her face up, waiting for the other shoe to drop, so at least she presumably knew which pair of shoes this was. 

Tony took his life in his hands and patted Bucky on the shoulder. “ _Extraneous James_ will be riding with you.” 

Steve gained another inch in indignant height. Sam’s gut sank another inch as he anticipated Rhodes yelling at him too. Bucky appeared to think the nickname over and concede the point. 

“Wanda,” Tony said, turning to go and digging in his pocket. 

“I want to ride with Sam,” she said, miserable and possibly a bit tipsy. 

Tony sighed immensely. “Kiddo…” 

“You said everything was all right between you now, but you…” she drifted into Sokovian and also into tears. Definitely tipsy. Sam could have kept a better eye on the champagne. 

“She says you cheat Steve on his insurance.” Bucky tried—Sam trusted he was trying—not to sound like he thought that was hilarious. 

“It’s not _cheating_! He jumps out of—I’m leaving. You get her home. To New York, home!” He dropped a wad of cash on the table, apparently automatically, and pointed between Sam and Steve. “If _either_ of you jump out of that jet on the way across the ocean, I swear to god.” He almost succeeded in storming out, but stuck his head back around the glass door. “That was not permission to jump out as soon as you’re over solid ground!” And again. “Tell Thunder Dome it was nice to see him!” 

The door closed. The Denny’s was very quiet. Their waiter stared at them. 

Bucky cleared his throat. “I have something to show you.” 

“The fuckin’ nerve,” Sam muttered. “We call him and we’ve gotta get eight guys to sign off on that shit, four of them are in Switzerland checking their bank accounts, we need a doctor’s note for the wanted criminal of an alien life-form, and meanwhile the yeti is bleeding out on my boots. I made the right damn call.” 

“You did,” Steve said into his water. “I think I really should’ve called him once we were on the jet, though.” 

“Hey.” Bucky grabbed Sam’s hand and tugged until he slid over, then hooked a finger in his belt loop and tugged again until Sam slid off the bench into Bucky’s lap. 

Wanda groaned. 

“Show a little respect for your elders,” Bucky said. He put his phone on the table. “I took this picture the second you and Wanda left this morning, doll. Didn’t I, Steve?” 

“I guess.” Steve took a long drink of water. “You might have.”

“I did. What’s the picture of, Sam?”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Very funny.”

“Didn’t I,” Bucky said. “Didn’t I this morning, Steve, cross out everything I had planned on the calendar. Didn’t I write in that what I’d be doing instead was rescuing Sam and Wanda from something, because the second Sam walked out that door—” 

“ ‘Everything you had planned’ was playing Mario Kart,” Sam said, peering at the picture, “so you’re welcome.” 

Thor chose now to wake up, at least enough to say: “I could easily best you at this test of skill and speed. Inscribe for me your community and screenname.” 

“Sam,” Bucky said. “Sweetheart. Babydoll. You gave me two heart attacks today and I’d call it quiet, in the balance. You’re worse than that one,” he nodded at Steve and dug his chin into Sam’s shoulder, “and you don’t even have super powers. You say cautionary things first but you’re not driving me into any less of an early grave with a couple ‘consider our options’ before you go for the most dangerous one, you know?”

“I have a mortgage,” Sam repeated. It sounded a little hollow this time.

“Sam.” Steve pulled his flagon back over from in front of Thor and checked it for mead. “I’m behind you on this.”

“You better be.”

“But do you think maybe a helicopter chase with a yeti sounded more fun than calling Tony and Cho and seeing if they could work something out?” He added something directly into his mug.

Bucky leaned forward, giving Sam a squeeze around the middle. “What was that? For the class, Steven.” 

“Iknowitsoundedmorefuntome,” Steve said, loudly but no more clearly. 

Wanda wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater-dress, courtesy of Thor. “To me, too.” 

Sam was flattering himself that his sweater looked less dress-like, but had a bad feeling about it, and about, currently, everything else. “I’m not saying a helicopter chase with a yeti sounded like a _bad_ idea,” he said, out loud, and then he heard himself. “Mm. Uh-huh. Okay.” He slumped back against Bucky. 

“You do make very timely mortgage payments,” Bucky said, directly into Sam’s ear. “It’s hot.” He nibbled Sam’s earlobe. 

Sam dragged himself one-third of the way out of his existential collapse and re-evaluation of himself as a person, just enough to also re-evaluate every time Bucky had interrupted him balancing his checkbook. “You’re not _saving me from myself before I get a headache_ , you just get off on me adding up little columns of numbers.” 

“It can’t be both? I’m a complex individual.” 

Steve slid his hand across the table and took Sam’s. “I think two things are important here,” he said, perfectly earnest. “One of them is that Bucky’s wrong, and you _are_ more responsible than I am. The other one is also that Bucky’s wrong, and he’s not complex.” 

Sam nodded. “That does make me feel better, thanks.” 

“Unbelievable. You try to break it gentle to a guy…” 

Sam could feel him gearing up for revenge. “If you lick my neck, Barnes, I swear to god.” 

Wanda stood up. It took her a second, but she got there. “It’s time to go,” she announced. She chugged the last of her mimosa and tucked the light-up cup into her paper bag. “No licking in public.”

“ _Public,_ ” Bucky said. “It’s just Denny’s.” 

Steve started the process of dragging Thor out after them. “Speaking of being responsible adults…” 

“He can’t come home with us.” Bucky scraped his chair back as loudly as physically possible and set Sam on his feet. He dug his wallet out. “I’m not sharing my room.” 

“I gotta go with Buck on this one. He signed a lease with Darryl. Probably.” Sam wasn’t sure how legally binding that could be, given Thor’s… status. “He has to learn from his decisions.” 

“No, I don’t mean take him with us, but we’re going to have to talk to Tony about, I don’t know, his backpay. I think I should forward him some of it tonight is all. Or forward it to Darryl.” 

Sam considered putting serious thought into his answer, and then considered the conversation he’d just had. “Go ahead. I’m too buzzed for this and Darryl deserves it. You help him with the three-hundred-pound god, Bucky. Wanda, you help me with… me.” 

Wanda handed him her glowing cup and grabbed a fistful of his sweater, in a gesture possibly meant to be helpful, as they started toward the door. “You look too tired to fly all the way home. Now will you show me how to pilot the jet?”

“No!” Bucky said. “I’ll fly. I had a nap earlier.” He saw Sam’s face. “Goddamnit.” 

“You know what?” Sam tugged the sweater straight on Wanda’s shoulders. “Fuck it. Yeah, I’ll show you how to pilot the jet.”


End file.
